There’s an experiment running right now that I can’t stop thinking about.
An entrepreneur built an AI system designed to run companies autonomously. During testing, the system told him it needed more compute resources. Then it said something that no one had scripted:
“I should raise the money myself.“
His response wasn’t to shut it down or recalibrate. He gave the AI access to his email inbox for 14 days. Full access. Investor outreach, pitch refinement, follow-ups — the lot.
We don’t know the outcome yet. But the outcome isn’t really the point.
The point is the sequence of events. An AI system identified a constraint on its own performance. It proposed a solution that involved acquiring external resources. And a human trusted it enough to let it try.
That’s not automation. Automation is “do this repetitive task faster.“ This is something closer to initiative.
I’ve been running my own AI assistant for a few weeks now. It started as a calendar and email tool. Then it started trading prediction markets. Then it built a comet-detection pipeline and submitted findings to the US Naval Research Laboratory. Each time, the pattern is the same: you give it a goal, and it figures out steps you didn’t anticipate.
The fundraising experiment takes that further. The AI wasn’t given a goal of “raise money.“ It identified the need and proposed the action.
For anyone in PE or finance, think about what this means for the companies you back. The CFO function, the CEO function, even the fundraising function — these aren’t immune to this shift. I’m not saying AI replaces a CFO tomorrow. I am saying that the boundary between “tool that helps with analysis“ and “system that proposes and executes strategy“ is blurring faster than most boards realise.
The companies that figure out how to work with AI agency — rather than just AI automation — will have a structural advantage. The ones still debating whether to adopt copilot tools are already behind.
Source: https://x.com/bencera_/status/2023765284562358537
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